New chapter, and while it's not as chonky as the last one, I do wanna get some slice of life moments in there for everyone. I don't recall if there's any warnings for this chapter since it's been a hot minute since I wrote it, but if anyone wants me to give a warning for anything, let me know and I'll edit this A/N. Until then, enjoy?
IX.
First Day
Arc Theme: Again - Yui
The entrance ceremony for the first-years was over and done with within the first hour of classes, and despite there being an official schedule to go off of, most of the day's classes were more lowkey in order to let the students get used to them. Support department students needed time to make the costumes in the new heroics department students' applications, and most important of all, returning students had much to prepare for now that there was a legitimate threat looming over the city.
It was rather inspiring for Uncle to watch it all go down.
He had to give Onisaburou credit where it was due, Uncle hadn't expected him to give a list of Pro Heroes in the area he could take the face of to observe. Unlike the copycat killers, Uncle wasn't itching to take any of the children and torture them for the fun of it. His kodoku had plenty of materials already, and the extras that Uncle might pick up would've just made it more effective. Yes, he'd sulked to Onisaburou that one of the Quirkless children wasn't grabbed instead of Usamaru, but Uncle was a patient man. He'd lasted this long, he could last a little longer.
But a surefire way into the school to observe and find some amusement in the new students? His nephew was spoiling him. It was so easy to corner the Pro Hero Nezha on patrol the night before, and the influx of memories that came with wearing his face had served Uncle well to remember all of Nezha's students and passwords. No one suspected he was an imposter, not yet, and Uncle knew better than to get complacent because no one suspected anything in the first hour.
Apparently Nezha—or rather, Wahei Sanren—was to be the homeroom teacher for the third-year students in class B. He was a responsible, but rather tunnel-visioned sort of man, and the students who'd graduated this past year all looked up to him as a paragon of what made a Pro Hero. Frankly speaking, Uncle couldn't have picked a more ironic face to steal; a man who fancied himself a proper, righteous hero, now being used as a front for the scum of the earth, all so that scum could pass some time. At the very least, his Quirk was useful. Uncle could see why he chose to pick the theme of Nezha for his hero costume—his ankles sprouting solid gold wheels that he could skate on at high speeds, and even light sparks when rubbed against the right surface, evoked the imagery of the Third Lotus Prince in spades. Uncle wouldn't deny having a little fun skating to the school at high speeds after hiding away the real, faceless Sanren in the makeshift hospital under his lair. If he hadn't been so unlucky as to make it onto Onisaburou's list of viable Pro Heroes in the area for Uncle to get the jump on, he might've had a chance to make it higher up on the rankings this year.
And oh, Uncle couldn't help if he happened to steal the face of the Quirkless girl's homeroom teacher.
"The first-years are certainly lively," a Pro Hero said as she entered the staff room—UFOriko, Uncle realised, and memories of her talking with Nezha in the past filtered in. She was an upbeat woman who was recently able to start her own agency, but because prospects for new sidekicks were low, she was willingly teaching at Zenshi to recruit groups upon graduation and help train Pro Heroes with a pair of fresh eyes that weren't quite green, but definitely closer to the students in terms of experience. "1-A has been a handful and a half. Has Mononoke come back from his class yet?"
Uncle shook his head, and he leaned forward to prop his chin on his hand. "Don't you say that every year?" he joked. Bantering just like Nezha would've.
UFOriko laughed and waved him off. From what Uncle could tell, she started out as a teacher's assistant before graduating to a fully fledged homeroom teacher for the past three years. She was always overwhelmed by her new students in the new school year, but almost couldn't bear to part with them when the time came for a classroom change at the end of each year.
She was in her costume, a dress that was reminiscent of an alien spaceship at the skirt while her wide sleeves reminded one of a classic alien-in-human-skin outfit. Her hair was up in a pair of bright orange space buns, thick and tightly compacted, and the two rings around the buns only made the hair look even more like two miniature replicas of Saturn. It was quite interesting that she chose such a theme for her costume, Uncle thought, when her Quirk was more in line with manifesting circles of light that had varying degrees of stretch and rebound when pressure was applied to them. It was more of a trampolining Quirk than anything to do with celestial bodies or gravity.
But UFOriko was happy with it, and Nezha was always happy if she was happy. Uncle didn't sense any romantic feelings between the two in Nezha's memories, but UFOriko always seemed to value his opinion more over others'.
"It's so odd, though," UFOriko said. She sank into her chair—which was notably different from the other desk chairs in the room, being more egg-shaped and clearly designer—and opened her laptop. "None of the recommendations got into my class this year. I know we don't get them often, but the two we got are from some big names. I mean, Recovery Girl was a vital figure in the community even when she retired, and Deku's the new Symbol of Peace. I wanted to get a glimpse of who they recommended so bad…"
Uncle laughed softly and smiled at her. "Maybe when your class starts doing joint exercises with 1-B," he reassured her.
She scrunched up her face, looking ready to start crying. "But that's so far away, Sanren!" she whined.
It was only after the summer training camp. That wasn't forever away, Uncle reasoned. But it was far enough down the line that the real Wahei Sanren would return, he thought. And then poor Kimo Oriko's priorities would be far from her students and the recommendation students, especially if Sanren raised the alarm on an imposter lurking in the school.
The door opened again, and this time Mononoke entered the room. Both Uncle and UFOriko looked up at the door, and Mononoke stood in the doorway with a glance at Uncle. He looked Uncle—looked Nezha—up and down, and the man dressed as a yuurei softly announced his presence with a note of, "Your hairpin is loose."
Uncle reached up—the moment his hand brushed the lotus hairpin bolding back Nezha's thick hair, everything spilled out and the hairpin clattered to the ground. UFOriko snorted a laugh, and Mononoke smiled to himself as he gracefully walked to his own desk. Uncle almost laughed with them, if only because he found it amusing that Sanren chose a costume that easily came undone when he used his Quirk, but stopped himself while his head was under the desk in search of the pin.
"Hey, hey, Mononoke, what's your class like?" UFOriko demanded. When Uncle sat back up, the attention was off of him entirely. He took the time to fix Nezha's hair and put the hairpin back in place, and he checked the mirror clipped to his desk for good measure.
Mononoke popped his shoulders as he sank into his chair with a groan. What did he have to sound so exhausted for? He was barely thirty.
"We're off to a stellar start," he reported, and he sounded tired. "Last night, Olivia-chan had to bring one of my boys to see Skathi about a premonition he had. Apparently Hachisuka Kuin isn't the only villain we have to worry about in the school."
UFOriko bounced up and down in her seat, excited to hear some gossip. "Who? Who?" she pressed him.
Mononoke smiled and brought a finger to his lips, making a motion to silence himself. Oriko huffed out her cheeks and pouted, turning back to Uncle as she did so.
"I guess if we weren't briefed about it, it's not an emergency," she grumbled.
Uncle nodded in agreement. He hadn't been called in for a meeting upon arrival, and Nezha didn't have any memories of extra security measures needing to be taken.
"Was the boy an informant?" Uncle asked, and Mononoke looked at him with a frown.
"No, he has future sight for a Quirk," he said. "Everyone in the class got cryptic messages from him when he introduced himself to them, but one of them had a full-blown meltdown last night while Olivia-chan and Ichigo-chan tried to hold an ice breaker event."
"Poor thing," UFOriko muttered. She looked less eager now, and appeared remorseful for wanting some gossip. "How are they holding up?"
"She was able to come to class, but we've advised the boy to stay away from her for today," he said. Uncle and UFOriko nodded simultaneously in agreement. "That aside, he also had a troubling premonition about one of your students, Nezha."
Uncle blinked, surprised. He reacted like Nezha would've—immediately learning forward, expression stern, as he waited for Mononoke to tell him what it was.
"Apparently Bebe-chan is going to drown at a pier," Mononoke went on. "No one will be around to pull her out, and she'll be too panicked to use her Quirk like usual."
The cat? Uncle could laugh, if he wasn't pretending to care about the little creature.
"This is the first I'm hearing it," Uncle said, and his voice was stern.
"Skathi was going to ask you to talk to Olivia-chan about it, but I said I'd pass the message along." Mononoke shrugged. "We can't just pull Bebe-chan from active duty, since she's supposed to become a Pro Hero, but I think her loss would be far more impactful than most, given her… adorable nature."
Uncle could argue that the cat's adorableness shouldn't weigh into how impactful her death would be. Plenty of adorable children died—plenty were going to die over the next couple of months, even, and Uncle was making sure of that—and no one batted an eye.
He still made an effort to look concerned, leaning back in his chair and sighing. "I'll have to have a word with Olivia-san and the students working with her on Bebe's support items," he groaned. "They'll need to work on a floatation device and emergency air supply, but then there's the matter of how to fit it all and filter out the water if she's suddenly submerged. I think the biggest issue is that Olivia-san controls most of Bebe's support items remotely. Do we know what Olivia-san's status is when the premonition happens?"
Mononoke worked his jaw, frustrated. He didn't seem happy with the knowledge he was about to share, and UFOriko became anxious in her seat as she watched him.
"He just said she was chasing a cloud and calling for an 'ooba'," Mononoke said quietly. "I'm sure we can all infer what that means."
Oh, Uncle could leap for joy. If there was one thing he knew, it was that the future the boy had seen was a future Uncle had been begging for ever since learning there was a Quirkless girl at Zenshi. His nephew finally came around and took the girl from under the cat's nose, and the villain community would have one less fledgling hero to worry about with the cat gone.
"Do we send Olivia-chan and Bebe back to I-Island?" UFOriko asked nervously.
"Absolutely not," both Uncle and Mononoke said in unison. It was more of a kneejerk reaction on Uncle's part—it seemed Nezha was violently opposed to the duo going to the one truly neutral place on the planet.
"Without Deku's watchful eye on them in the country's borders, there's no doubt Bebe-chan will be experimented on again," Mononoke explained. Uncle nodded in agreement. "I'm sure we could hand them back to the States for protection, but the government was looking to weaponise Bebe-chan as well. In case of another All for One situation."
What could a mere house cat go against someone like All for One? If anything, it would've been cannon fodder for All for One to stockpile more Quirks, and Apex Predator was one Quirk Pro Heroes didn't want supervillains to get their hands on.
Mononoke let out a small sigh, though, and relaxed a little as he opened his own laptop. "Regardless," he went on, "Skathi and I are working with Deku to try and convince UA to transfer Olivia-chan and Bebe into their roster. Ingenium has agreed to help do some convincing, but it's the issue of transferring a student into UA after others were turned away during a gruelling entrance exam that poses the most issue. From my understanding, Olivia-chan is already being ostracised by those outside of the heroics department for taking a spot everyone else desired."
A memory sparked from Nezha—of Olivia being ganged up on by general studies department students while Bebe was away from her. He could see Nezha storm over in the memory, demanding to know what was going on, and Olivia shamefully looking at the floor after her harassers fled the scene.
Really, all the hand-holding was unnecessary.
"Maybe we'll get lucky," Uncle thought out loud, echoing Nezha's sentiments, "and a major Pro Hero will house her for a while. Maybe until your boy's premonition changes."
"The problem is that we don't know when that'll be," Mononoke groaned. "I tried everything—asking him to draw what stars were visible, list any logos to pinpoint which pier it'll be, even what Bebe's costume looked like in case there were upgrades made to it. Everything was so distressing for him that he couldn't remember much else except for Bebe's cries."
What a useless boy. For the heroes, at least. Uncle welcomed the inability to pinpoint the when and the stress that came with it. A man who lived every day in fear of an air conditioning unit crushing him to death was a man who was more likely to accidentally walk into traffic in his fear of the buildings beside him.
"We'll work something out," Uncle reassured him. UFOriko nodded fervently in agreement.
"Maybe I'll have Olivia-chan shack up with me for a while!" she suggested. "We can call it an extended internship! She already has her licence, and I can bring her study materials back home with me."
"But then we're isolating her and Bebe," Mononoke countered. "If only this wasn't such a dilemma."
Hm. If only. Uncle bit back a smile and opened Nezha's laptop.
"Let's see what our headmistress has to say," Nezha told them. UFOriko and Mononoke both nodded once, dejected. "I'm sure Skathi and Deku are hard at work keeping his recommendations safe. We all know how rare it is for him to recommend anyone, after all."
So rare, in fact, that now Uncle's curiosity was piqued at the other recommendation. The one in Mononoke's class. His focus was on Olivia for now, but once Olivia was secured… Maybe a man-made Quirkless child would yield some results.
She set down the copy of The Legends of Tono on her desk with a heavy sigh. Already done with their first class of the day, and it had to be a Japanese Literature class. Sumie was ready to throw in the towel after working herself up to actually attending classes today, but she pushed herself to persevere anyway. As much as she regretted her little meltdown the night before, she did want to try to make friends with people in the class who… didn't already think she was a loose cannon.
Of everyone in the class who seemed just as daunted by the assignment as Sumie, only four others could be found. That other antisocial kid, Kanon, was glaring daggers down at his copy of the book, and the ditz known as Yoyo was sobbing onto the cover of her book as the girl behind her, Hanabi, tried to reassure her that everything would be alright. All things considered, according to their teacher, the reading material and assignments would be easy to start off with. But if some of them struggled with this book, how bad were they going to risk flunking the other books?
She'd been a little apprehensive because of the future sight boy saying what he'd said to her, but after thinking on it last night—after her mind was clear, of course—Sumie had come to realise that he hadn't said those things to him out of malice or to threaten her. The way he'd said it, it sounded almost like reassurance towards a child doing their best not to let anyone know they were nervous about something. Gentle, patient, warm. And it'd simply scared Sumie at first. And as much as she hated to admit it, the three girls who'd followed her to the bathroom and hovered over her had helped a little with calming her down.
Hime was sitting behind her, to the right in the corner of the room, next to the boy directly behind Sumie. She was already out of her seat and languidly draped herself over Sumie's desk, and Sumie pulled her book off of the desk before it was squished. Hime was almost goblin-like in her demeanour, doing as she pleased and demanding attention like a cat, and not for the first time, Sumie compared Hime to the cat she used to feed behind the convenience store near Iwao's house. She wondered if Iwao had found her note that asked to continue feeding the cat.
When her mind went to Iwao, Sumie's eyes drifted down to her wrist. To the Quirk-suppressing bracelet clamped around it. Unless she was in combat classes, the bracelet had to stay on at all times. It wasn't exactly hard to guess what the bracelet was for if you did any surface-level research into support items. Sumie hurriedly tucked the book under her desk and hid her bracelet under her sleeve, yanking her grey hoodie well over her fingers as Hime gave her a lopsided smile.
"How are we feeling today, Ishibashi?" she drawled. "You want me to make my bees do a synchronised dance like those air shows in America?"
She could do that? No, wait, not the point. Sumie cleared her throat and looked away from Hime, still uncertain of the girl's motives. She was definitely a more calming presence compared to Hanabi and Yoyo, but Sumie had done a lot of thinking about Hime's situation after she was done worrying about her own. How much of Hime's demeanour was genuine kindness, and how much was Kuin subtly trying to rebuild her influence again? She felt somewhat sympathetic—almost like someone in this school properly understood her—because of Hime being observed and properly "rehabilitated" by a Pro Hero, but Sumie wasn't like her. Sumie never committed any crimes, was never a villain to begin with. They weren't entirely in the same boat, but rather floating down the same river in similarly damaged canoes and weighing up whether it was worth hoping it would last the trip or jumping ship to fend for themselves in the rapids.
"I'm fine," Sumie forced out. Hime hummed, contemplative, and rolled over until she was laying on the desk on her stomach. "You can go back to your seat."
"I sure can," Hime drawled. "But I don't wanna. We've got another five minutes before the next class starts, right?"
Hm. Even if they did, why was Hime crowding Sumie today? She expected this kind of behaviour from Yoyo, who didn't seem to understand when enough was enough, but Hime? Who was clearly calm and calculating beneath her gremlin demeanour? There was no way she couldn't tell Sumie was starting to get anxious again.
"Hey, hey, what are you gonna have for lunch today?" Hime bugged her.
Sumie frowned. "Probably something traditional," she mumbled. "I haven't picked if I want grilled fish or curry chicken, though."
"They both sound pretty good right about now," Hime mused. Sumie furrowed her brows and actually looked at the one-eyed girl.
"We just had breakfast before this last class," she pointed out.
"Yeah, but did you see the portions some of these guys had? I bet we could fit some more in as a snack." And then Hime seemed to realise something, sitting up again as she smirked at Sumie. "I bet Yoyo will give us some snacks in her stash if we ask."
Snacks? Maybe. She wouldn't object to some konpeito, but when Sumie looked over at Yoyo, the girl was having her attention taken up by the people around her. They were clearly all offering to help her out, which Yoyo was thanking them for profusely and dramatically, and Sumie looked back to Hime with pursed lips. No, she didn't want to interrupt. They'd probably think she was annoying or keep their distance because Mirato had blabbed about her premonition to everyone already.
Even Mirato was avoiding her today, and he sat diagonally to the left in front of her. It was like he was no longer thinking about her, his focus on everyone in front of him, and something in Sumie seemed to whisper that, like everyone else who approached her to be her friend, there was a lie, a cautionary motive, mixed in with the friendship. Just like the ones Iwao and Deku paid to observe her in public during middle school, doing their best to let her live a normal life—a life free of being trapped behind cell bars, like any middle school girl should be able to live.
Hime seemed to notice this reservation in Sumie's expression. She hummed, then skipped to the other side of Sumie—and she gave Teru's chair a little nudge beside her. Teru sat to Sumie's left, and Sumie quickly looked back down at her desk as he gave Hime a very disgruntled, almost delinquent-like, "Hah?"
No pretty boy should be making sounds like that. Sumie wondered how much of him was a contradiction.
"Hey, hey, Teru," Hime said innocently, like she hadn't just kicked his chair. "How confident are you with the reading assignment?"
Teru's expression softened a bit, almost as though he expected Hime to say she was going to struggle and ask him for help. Sumie supposed, at the end of the day, Teru still wanted to be seen as reliable and someone people could ask for help from, regardless of his demeanour.
"Pretty decent," he said. He held up the book of tales with one hand, leaning back in his chair as he did so. "We did a lot of reading on this kind of stuff at my middle school, as well. It wasn't standard, but we studied The Tale of the Heike for our theatre classes instead of doing a performance in our final year. Nekota-san and Kirameki-san should be able to help you as well."
"I think I should be fine. But my buddy behind me looked a little pale when we got the books," Hime drawled, and Sumie hurriedly pulled her jacket's hood over her head. Seriously? She was really throwing her under the bus like this? Sumie didn't even want help! Who cared if she was nervous about doing a book report? Who cared if Japanese literature was a weak point for her? It wasn't Sumie's fault that she preferred a good fantasy novel instead!
Teru leaned back in his seat even more, sizing Sumie up, and then he shrugged. "Sure, why not? Not to be nerdy, but studying sessions were the most fun part of exam season for me."
"Nerdy-nerdy-nerd," Hime chanted. She skipped back to Sumie's chair and gave the back of it a rattle, and Sumie gritted her teeth together. "Teru's a nerd, right, Ishibashi?"
"Can you—" Sumie started, and she choked when she realised her voice had come out as a yell. She pulled her hood lower over her face, the light on her Quirk-suppressing bracelet turning on—her Quirk had just tried to activate out of reflex, and Sumie felt a wave of disgust wash over her. She hated this Quirk. She hated it. She hated having this Quirk. "Can you please stop?"
Hime, to her credit, did stop. She peered over the chair and around Sumie, trying to look at her face, and Sumie just turned away from her. She caught sight of Teru looking her way, concerned, and when he saw the distress on her face, his expression became stern.
"Hachisuka-san," he said, and his voice was flat. Lower than he'd clearly trained it to be with vocal exercises. It was the kind of low that Iwao's voice got when Sumie used to be normal—used to be his normal daughter doing normal bratty daughter things. "She's at her limit. Why don't you get your next textbook out?"
Instead of putting up a fight or anything, Hime just huffed out her cheeks playfully and let out a small, "Boo, nerdy Teru," as she sat back down in her seat. She seemed pleased with herself, doubly so when Teru reached over and tapped Sumie's desk.
"The offer for a study sesh still stands," he reassured her, voice gentler this time. Sumie relaxed a little. "We don't even have to shoot the shit. We can just sit in the library and make sure other people stay away while we study."
Sit in the library and chase everyone else off? Say no more. Sumie looked at him properly, sniffling, and she threw him a small smile as she nodded once. Anxiously, almost scared that she'd be told her help wasn't needed, Sumie asked him, "C—Can I help you with any studies in return?"
Teru shrugged with a smile. "My shortcomings are in P.E., honestly," he said casually. "No one ever told me it'd be so hard to run around in a binder, so I just started taking doctor's notes to school to get me out of the class. Can't do that at Zenshi, though."
Sumie huffed a small laugh. She could see him sitting in the shade during a hot summer day, sipping a juice box lazily while his class laboured on the track field during P.E. Oddly fitting for him.
"I can help you there a little," she decided. "My… dad, he taught me some exercises to help limber up the body for a lot of running around."
To her surprise, Teru clapped his hands together and bowed his head in thanks towards her.
"You're doing my poor leg muscles a favour," he said dramatically. "They can't handle cramping up mid-stride any longer!"
Sheesh, he was really out of shape if they cramped up that often. Maybe Teru wasn't the one doing Sumie a favour, but rather the other way around. At the very least, she thought, the things she could give him pointers on weren't Spartan in nature. Just bare basic muscle care and stretches.
The teacher for the next class entered, and they didn't comment on Sumie's hood being up. She looked back to the front of the class, a bit more relaxed now, and out of the corner of her eye, she saw it. A ghost of a smug smile on Hime's face, like she'd just gotten away with something; and when she glanced over at Mirato, he was almost smiling to himself with relief.
Did they plan Sumie making a friend? Finding common ground with someone? Attending a study session?
Son of a—
"Right, hello everyone," the Pro Hero at the front of the class announced. "Welcome to your first math class of the school year. You might all recognise me as Mad Hatter, but for the purpose of my role today, you may call me Intelli-sensei."
Intelli? Sumie stared at the woman with narrowed eyes. She recalled Iwao mentioning her once, saying that she had the same name as the… No, best not to think about that, Sumie thought. That name had nothing to do with her.
But the more she looked at the woman, the more her moniker of Mad Hatter made sense. She was dressed in a grey and brown suit that was loose in some places, while neatly tucked in others, and her pure white gloves reminded Sumie of a butler's. The large hat she wore on her head didn't have the usual note tucked into it that the typical Mad Hatter in novels would have, but it was littered with pens and notepads for the wearer to grab and use whenever. She wore a single monocle over one bluish-lavender eye, and her periwinkle hair was tied back in a low ponytail while her straight bangs framed her face in a hime cut.
Intelli Saiko, an alumnus of Seiai Academy. Like most of the girls at her former school, she was used to working in groups. Sumie had heard stories from Iwao about how valuable her Quirk was, and that there was genuine panic in a sting operation if they ever ran out of warm tea for her to drink.
Sumie never would've guessed she'd be her math teacher. Well, in hindsight and with knowledge of her Quirk, it did make sense and was probably predictable, but Sumie had assumed she would be busy helping other Pro Heroes look for the Boogeyman.
Someone else seemed to think the same thing. A hand rose from the other side of the class, where Kiaria was sitting.
"Intelli-sensei, I thought you'd be helping the other Pro Heroes look for Boogeyman?" she asked, inquisitive.
Mad Hatter crossed her arms over her chest, weighing up Kiaria with a frown, and she sighed before turning back to the whiteboard. "The progress on the hunt for the Boogeyman is confidential and not something students should concern themselves with," she told Kiaria matter-of-factly. "Ask me again when you get your provisional licence."
Before Kiraria could say something else, Mad Hatter turned around—done with what she was writing—and pulled a suitcase from seemingly out of nowhere and slammed it on her desk with a grunt. One by one, she pulled out things from the suitcase that everyone stared in awe at. First a chair that had to be put together, small enough to barely be called a stool. Then a camping table that could barely fit a whole meal on it, set up right in front of the stool. Then she pulled a thermos from the suitcase and perched it gently on the table. And then a teacup and saucer of an ornate design, reminding Sumie of a tiger lily in design. And finally, a large stack of paper that was clearly multiple copies of the same hefty stack of papers stapled together.
Sumie had a bad feeling about this.
"Before we dive into any curriculum whatsoever," Mad Hatter announced as she shut the suitcase and tucked it behind the desk. "You'll all be spending the next hour of class taking a middle school level exam for mathematics so I can gauge your level of skill. The last thing anyone needs is to be left behind when they need help the most in a class as merciless as numbers."
She split the stack of papers into six lots of four, and she handed each one to the first student in each row of the class. They groaned in unison and handed the remaining copies to the person behind them, and Sumie felt her stomach drop when Kanon leaned back to pass the last two copies to her. She barely got a glance at the top of the exam paper before she turned to hand it to Ryuichi behind her, and she saw him smiling brightly with excitement as he took the papers from her with a grateful hum.
Other people weren't so happy to be taking a math exam right out the gate, though. Almost the entirety of the first row of students was pale and looking filled to the brim with dread except for Hime, who happily leafed through the pages to skim over the questions with a hum. The only one in Sumie's row who seemed to be frustrated with the exam was Kanon, who ran his hands through his hand and rubbed at his eyes tiredly. On the other side of the room, it seemed only one or two looked genuinely dismayed by the situation, like Mirato and Kaiten, but others seemed to be grinning and bearing it. Everyone else who wasn't Yoyo, who thunked her head loudly against her desk? Perfectly fine with the exam.
Mad Hatter sat herself down on her little stool and opened her thermos, pouring herself some tea in the tiger lily teacup, and she took a sip as everyone regarded their exam papers with mixed reactions. She paused, savouring the taste of her tea, and then she regarded the class from her little corner of the classroom.
"No red pen allowed," she informed them. "Calculators are permitted for questions twenty-two-A through twenty-six-C only. You have fifty minutes to complete the test, not a whole hour, and I will permit a trip to the cafeteria for a drink after the exam to refresh yourselves for the next class. Are we all understood?"
She looked over at the class. Half of them weren't even looking at her, still fumbling for their pens and pencils as they scribbled their names at the top of the exam papers. Despite having just recently sat through them, Sumie wouldn't deny there was a certain pressure to having to redo her middle school math exam just to get a start on her high school math lessons. What if she got something she knew was right back in middle school wrong now? What if she lucked into an answer and Mad Hatter misunderstood her intelligence level? There was so much pressure to this that her hand was shaking as she wrote her name and seat number. And then she saw Teru in the corner of her eye, waving her down, and Sumie glanced at him.
He sucked in a big breath visually, waiting until she did as well, and when she did, he counted down five fingers on one hand before letting out his own breath. Sumie did the same, and the tension in her shoulders eased out with her exhale. This would be fine. Math wasn't her weakest subject. It may not have been her strongest, but she knew enough to get a passing grade in middle school.
It would be okay.
When Mad Hatter announced for everyone to start, she almost didn't even notice the heavy weight of the silence lingering over the room.
"My brain's been fried," Teru whined as he finished off his can of coffee. "I don't have it in me to last till lunch."
Hibana scoffed beside him. Was he always such a dramatic person? She couldn't tell. That rat bastard Shiichi always got in the way whenever she tried to listen in on conversations, and that worm Tsuna was always right behind him in that regard. This was the first time ever having such a conversation with Teru, and Hibana was slowly starting to see that some things back from his days as Suzuna never changed.
"If you put in more effort to study, you wouldn't be so nervous," Hibana said airily. Teru looked at her with a disgruntled expression, tapping one finger against the empty coffee can as he did so.
"I study all the time," he whined. "We can't all be B plus average students, you know."
"You're right. You could be an A average student instead," Hibana fired back. Teru whined some more, but he didn't protest. "Have you even worked out how you're going to handle our physical education classes? Combat training?"
They were walking down the corridor towards their classroom, some of the others having opted to stay in the classroom while their friends went to get drinks for them. Teru was one such friend, his backpack filled with various juice boxes and coffee cans for the others in their row, and Hibana was going to make damn certain that they didn't take his goodwill for granted. He could've left them to waste away with nothing to drink! But he didn't! And Hibana sure as shit tried to make sure he did!
He shrugged lazily, sighing as he did so, and she saw someone walk past them in a hurry with a handful of drinks. It looked like Aoi, she thought, and she was calling for Tetsuya with that irritating prattle of, "Mom!" as she burst through the classroom door.
"One of my deskmates offered to help me out," he reasoned. Hibana bristled. Already? Damn it, she was going to use this as a segue into offering to help him… "Ishibashi. Her name's familiar, though. Swear there's a Pro Hero by the name."
"Oh, Ishibashi Iwao?" Hibana asked, disinterested. "He goes by Flint. I read something about his Quirk being able to turn his body to stone and perform feats of immense strength. Very well-respected."
"Must be her dad," Teru noted. And Hibana did a double-take. She didn't recall the Pro Hero Flint having any children. But if she was related to him, that brought into question the hows and whens. Did he adopt? She looked nothing like him. Hibana had seen pictures, and that crusty-lipped emo was nothing like Flint! "She said he taught her some tricks to prevent cramping, and I could do with some tips and help."
Hibana scoffed and flicked her hair over her shoulder, smirking as she did so. "Why rely on a stranger when you have me for help?" she said confidently. "I did manage to stand toe-to-toe with you in that fight we got into back in the day."
"Beating the shit out of each other isn't a valid form of exercise," Teru deadpanned.
"That wasn't what I was getting at!" Hibana glowered at him. "What I mean is that you know me, and I know what you need to improve upon, and since I always do exercises for my line of work, I could coach you on a proper morning routine."
Teru seemed to pause. Hibana slowed her walk with him, hopeful, and he seemed to ease up as his expression softened and became more aware. Like he'd just had an epiphany. Perfect, she thought. That crusty emo bitch could wallow on her own instead of bringing the class average down along with her.
"Y'know what," Teru said, voice light. "That's not a bad idea. I'll see if Ishibashi wants to join us, and we can make a morning thing out of it. Then we can focus on the afternoons for studying and unwinding… Yeah, she might like that. Good idea, Kirameki-san."
Everything in Hibana's brain screeched to a halt. Her idea wasn't to invite a third wheel into the mix. Her idea was one-on-one training with Teru so she could bring out his full potential. A third wheel was the farthest thing from what she had in mind with her suggestion.
The surprise of it all caused her to blank out so much, that she hadn't even noticed Teru was at the classroom door until he called for her with a puzzled expression. Hibana hurried after him, grumbling as she did so, and she sank into her seat at the front of their row with a frown. It was bad enough that two pink boys were competing with her right now, but Ishibashi Sumie decided to throw her lot into the ring too? Madness.
Teru walked by her desk and set down a bottle of water for her—the only water bottle in the bag, she noted gleefully, as if he'd remembered she didn't like snacking and sugary drinks to begin with—and Hibana listened as he approached other desks with drink deliveries while Mad Hatter packed up her belongings into her suitcase again.
She could hear Teru suggesting the morning exercise to Sumie, and Sumie quietly saying that it would be a good way to train his body to get into a more physical habit naturally, and then she had to listen as Teru approached a couple of others to ask if they were interested in a study session in the afternoons.
Hibana pulled one of the small die from her desk and set it on the desk with a huff. She gave it a nudge, flicking it onto one of its many sides, before picking it up and glaring at it through her clenched fist.
"He'll reciprocate one day," she muttered. "Maybe even this week."
She dropped the twenty-sided dice onto the desk, trying to force her Quirk into action, but nothing happened as it landed on a solid ten. A truly neutral result. And if her Quirk had been able to activate, to properly utilise Dungeons & Dragons as a new aspect of her Quirk, it might've been a hopeful result.
For now, though, being unable to use the complicated dice system of Dungeons and Dragons with her Quirk, that ten was a slap in the face. Even a critical one would've been comical, in a sense. A perfect split in the middle with ten was mocking her.
To her left, Nekota Miyuki leaned over and looked at the dice with wide eyes.
"You can use Dungeons and Dragons for your Quirk?" she asked. Hibana sneered and snatched away the dice, shoving it back under her desk.
"Not yet," she hissed. And then she forced herself to stop bristling. No, of all the people in this class, she could confidently say Miyuki was the last amount of threat. She was even halfway decent, what with how much praise she'd given Hibana last night when she realised where she'd recognised the ginger girl from. "I'm working out the kinks. With any luck, it could have the potential as a reality-warping aspect of my Quirk."
Miyuki let out an intrigued sound, leaning back in her seat again. "That's so cool," she marvelled. "I love how versatile your Quirk is, Kirameki. What games can you use currently?"
She loved it? Well, Hibana wouldn't turn away more praise. She smiled over at Miyuki and turned in her seat to face her properly.
"You must understand, I need to keep some tricks up my sleeve," Hibana began, and Miyuki nodded eagerly. "But for the entrance exam, I made use of Uno cards and a Twister mat to outsmart Bebe-senpai. A Twister mat allows for me to spread the board out and enact the rules of Twister at my own discretion, and whatever limb I call out to a certain colour is forcibly dragged to that colour. It's very handy for holding a person in place."
"You could tie a villain up in knots and not even break a sweat," Miyuki muttered, impressed. "No wonder you survived Bebe-senpai so easily."
"Naturally." Hibana flicked her hair over her shoulder. "And when Olivia-senpai got involved and brought out the flamethrower, Uno was the next one I relied on. I can create various effects with the trump cards, but the numbered cards are good for making copies of myself. I used one to make it take the hit from Bebe-senpai's attack after the flamethrower was used, and the rest is history."
Miyuki was counting on her fingers quietly as she listened, brows pinched in thought. And then she looked back at Hibana, eyes wide as saucers.
"How did you not get into UA? And how are you only in B class?" she asked, stunned.
Hibana considered it for a moment. Right, why didn't she get into UA? She looked down at her desk, thoughtful, and she contemplated it for a moment. All things considered, Hibana should've been a shoe-in for A class. She had the versatility and pre-existing capabilities with her Quirk, she was a B+ average student consistently throughout her school career. Short of allowing her into A class with the added bonus of her pre-existing reputation, something just struck her as odd when she thought about why she didn't make the cut to begin with. She would've definitely made it into A class at UA, but she'd chosen Zenshi because it felt more like it lined up with the values that Mabushi so desperately needed back then.
Mabushi… Zenshi was a school Mabushi would approve of, right?
Would she have cared if her hero came from the rejects of the top ranking students? Something in Hibana told her she wouldn't. What Mabushi had wanted wasn't prestige or accomplishments. She'd wanted a friend. Someone to say she was loved and needed.
Anyone could do that, regardless of if they were the top graduate at UA or a former student of the now-defunct Isatake Academy.
Hibana had been heartbroken at first, when she got her acceptance letter and that big fat B on her class designation stared back at her. She'd kicked and screamed and broken a few things, and she'd even broken one of the walls in her family's mansion when her parents had asked her about it. Well. Two of the walls, she reasoned, but the second time was an accident. She'd actually been trying to calm down the second time and didn't take into account how much rage was still in her hands, which were consequently thrown when Hibana had nothing else left to throw in their place. It had broken her, and for a while she thought that Zenshi had done this to spite her. That Skathi, the headmistress, had taken one look at Hibana and decided she needed to be humbled. Because what else was being put in B class, if not a humbling?
But now, on the first actual day of classes, something in her clicked. She'd seen the window for 1-A on the way to the cafeteria to get the drinks, and they were struggling with the same math exam that they had. They didn't look any more special than her class did, and some of them looked forgettable compared to some of her classmates. And it clicked into place for Hibana that there truly was no difference between the classes except for the letter at the end of its room number. According to their upperclassmen, A and B class intermingled so often that the separate classrooms were just a formality on paper. That was why Ichigo and Olivia, members of class 3-B, spent so much time in 3-A—the people they were planning to form groups with at graduation were there, and the same could be said of the 3-A students who sat in 3-B's classes.
She let out a slow breath, glancing back at Miyuki, and the girl had propped her chin up on her palm as her tail flicked patiently back and forth under the chair.
"You know," Hibana finally said, "the whole Plus Ultra thing UA has going on isn't my style. I shouldn't need to go Plus Ultra if I already plan to go above and beyond every day. Zenshi… Zenshi has values closer to my goals, I think. But it won't stop me from trying to transfer into A class before our third year, so enjoy your time with me while you can!"
She made a show of acting snide when she said it, but Miyuki just chuckled and threw a smile her way. Ah, she thought as she watched Miyuki's ears flick in time with her laughter, Miyuki sure was adorable. Just like a real cat.
"What about you?" she asked, and Miyuki paused her laughter to blink at her, surprised. "Why'd you come to Zenshi? Were you expecting A class as well?"
Miyuki opened her mouth, but thought better of what she was going to say. She sniffed and sat up straight again, and Hibana saw her tail moving at a more irate pace. Well excuse her! How was she supposed to know the one question everyone asked each other at a hero academy would be a sore spot for a heroics department student!?
But Miyuki did answer her, looking ashamed as she tucked some hair out of her face, and she cleared her throat before speaking.
"I… probably have a pretty blasphemous reason compared to everyone else," Miyuki told her. "You'd probably think someone else in the general studies department deserves my spot more than me, if I tell you."
"Don't decide for me what I'll feel," Hibana said coldly. "Go on. Out with it. I'll make the decision of my opinion myself, thank you very much."
Miyuki laughed again, this time more helpless and guilty, and she nodded once.
"I actually kinda… don't know what I want to do with my life," she said. "My mother has a quirk suited for cultivating plant growth, so she became a florist. My father was always big and bulky and strong, so becoming a security guard was a no-brainer for him. My brother adores video games and art design, so he's got his eye on a future in video game design and character design for media. My aunt's a Pro Hero, and she always knew she would be one—and then my cousin on my dad's side hyperfixated on medicine as a kid, so he's in medical school now, while his little sister always wrote fanfiction, and now she's winning writing contests while she's in her final year of middle school. I just… never found that calling like they all did."
"You don't have hobbies?" Hibana asked, judgemental to the max, and she was certain this was the part Miyuki said she'd judge her for. She was already doing it, after all.
"Well, I like video games and sleeping," Miyuki said, weakly defending herself. "And I'm good at ice skating. But… figure skating doesn't feel like a right fit for me."
Hibana tilted her head, lips pursed. "So?" she prompted her.
Miyuki shrugged. "So I thought maybe a hero academy would open up more opportunities for me," she reasoned. "A diploma from a place like Shiketsu and UA can get you into so many diverse universities in the country, and a lot of kids from hero academies can be scouted for whatever reason by corporations who want their specific talents. I mean, we have a whole department for marketing, right? That's so wild." Miyuki waved a hand dismissively, almost as though chasing away the tangent she was about to go on. "Anyway. Somewhere along the way, I kinda got my hopes up about being a Pro Hero. There's a lot of different areas I could go into, not just villain apprehension, but my heart's not entirely in it. I don't know if it's what I want to do, I just know it's something I could do. And I really did hope I'd get into 1-A, at first. I did a lot of thinking while I trained for the entrance exam, and hero work really is the most streamlined kind of work out there, y'know? I don't need any special talent for art or medicine to do it—not with the route I choose to go with it—and even if I retire, I'll have found new skills to make use of somewhere else. And I might do some good along the way, too! And if I don't leave any options to back out of it, I might actually commit to it and be kinda good at it?"
"So you're fickle," Hibana deadpanned.
Miyuki nodded once, guilty. "It's why everyone, including my aunt, tried to talk me out of it. I thought if I could get into 1-A and prove that I could do it, and actually enjoy myself along the way, everything would work out," she went on. "But… here I am, in B class. I fell short, and now I have to put the work in instead of meeting expectations to keep up with everyone else if I want to be taken seriously. I really… I kinda wanted to prove I could do it if I put my mind to it, but putting my mind to it resulted in B class. And now I'm at the school where the latest victim was from, and I have to rely on Koizumi-san to tell me whether or not I wind up as some supervillain's skinsuit within the next twenty-four hours."
Behind Hibana, Mirato chimed in, "You're clear for the next twenty-four hours."
Miyuki threw a thumbs-up behind her shoulder at him, genuinely thankful as she let out a sigh of relief.
Hibana was more surprised, though. She hadn't expected that Miyuki would think the same thing about being in B class, especially since she seemed so laid-back and chill about it last night. She must've been good at hiding how much things really weighed on her, Hibana thought, and constantly being told that the one thing she chose as her Thing was off the table must've been the biggest weight on her shoulders.
It was honestly a pathetic kind of thing to be torn up over, but Hibana understood it. A little, but a little was enough sometimes. If she'd understood Mubashi even just the smallest amount, things might've been different.
Things would've been different, no ifs, ands, or buts.
Hibana let out a soft, "Hpmh," and turned to face the front of the class again. Miyuki was quiet as she also turned back to the front, seeming crestfallen from the conversation, and her tail hung limply behind her chair. Her ears were folded back, and Hibana sniffed as she stared forward.
"A group of us are going to do morning exercises together," Hibana said airily. "Perhaps you can join us, and we can see about working together to transfer into A class. If you're still desiring A class, that is."
Miyuki turned her head towards Hibana so quickly that she swore she heard a pop. There was hope in her eyes, hope that Hibana could see from her peripheral, and Miyuki sucked in a deep, calming breath as she contained her joy.
"Thanks, Kirameki," she said, and her voice was wavering a little. "I won't drag you down."
"I'd never let you," Hibana scoffed. "No one can drag me down, no matter how hard they try."
If there was one thing to be said about 1-B, it was that they apparently had the biggest appetite of everyone in the school. Yuzu was almost too shocked to comment on it, but as Yoyo slid into a chair across from him at the table, where he was sitting on the other side of Teru and opposite Hibana and Tora, he damn near dropped the portion of miso-ginger grilled chicken slaw on his fork from the sheer size of Yoyo's order. He'd seen the ones before him, naturally—he was behind them in line, and Shiki and Aoi and Shogo's meals alone could've fed a small group of people going out for lunch—and now, seeing Yoyo's, Yuzu could only stare in shock as she counted all of her seventy-two gyoza and gleefully poured seasoning on her three large bowls of ramen.
"Everyone's food looks so delicious!" Yoyo cheered once she was done counting her gyoza. Tora had paused mid-bite into his vegetarian burrito to stare in horror at Yoyo's meal. "Did Gourmand make fruit sando specially for lunch?"
The fruit sando in question, which was set on a plate between Teru and Hibana, was being snacked on by the duo quietly to themselves. Apparently Hibana was more of a fruit kind of person, and the fruit sando were made ready to order compared to everything else—and so Teru, who'd been in line next to her, ordered enough for the both of them to split over lunch. Yuzu was surprised Yoyo hadn't seen any, but he supposed her eyes were more on the gyoza and ramen servings. Seriously, it looked like there was enough there for three people to stuff themselves silly with.
"Do you want one?" Teru asked slowly. Hibana scoffed, but Yoyo gasped with glee and reached over to pluck a peach sando from the pile. She bit into it, some whipped cream getting all over her chubby cheeks, and Yoyo let out a delighted sound as she chewed.
"Delicious!" she cheered. Without hesitation, Yoyo pulled down the collar of her shirt and stuffed the sando into her star, storing it with the other food inside. "What did everyone else get?"
Tora held up his burrito, the contents of which were now visible now that he'd taken his bite properly, and Yoyo peered into it with wide eyes. "Just some jasmine rice, black beans, lettice and cheese. I also got a pear for if I'm still hungry after."
He pulled the pear from the wrapper the burrito had come in, where he'd been resting it on the table, and Yoyo nodded fervently at the sight of it. She looked over at Yuzu, and Yuzu held up some chicken from his dish on his fork.
"It's just a coleslaw with grilled chicken, miso and ginger paste on both the chicken and slaw," he explained. "I saw a recipe for it online and asked Gourmand to make it for me."
"You have to tell me if it tastes good!" Yoyo insisted. "Ah, who am I kidding? All food tastes good!"
With a spread like she had, he didn't doubt it.
"Do you guys think Gourmand knows how to make Starbeans drinks?" Teru asked idly. Hibana scrunched up her nose at him as she paused eating her sando.
"Those things are loaded to hell and back with sugar," she critiqued.
Teru shrugged and opened a strawberry sando. "Yeah, but they taste good, and that's what matters."
"I know how to make them." Yuzu pushed some of his salad around. "I've tried most secret menu drinks at least once. What were you fancying?"
He'd known that Teru was a fan of the fancy secret menu drinks that Starbeans offered, and Yuzu had to admit that some of them were genuinely delicious. Others were devoid of any coffee beans in the process altogether, and he wasn't a fan of those ones. A smoothie wasn't his forte, but a frappuccino with more frapp than ccino? Yeah, he could manage one of those.
"Thinking out loud, mostly," Teru mused. "You get a little sick of canned coffee every day when you try to push through a study session. Figured something nice with my dinners might perk me up a little."
"Caffeine is bad for your health," Hibana went on, still nagging him.
"And like sugar, it tastes nice," Teru repeated. "And that's what matters."
"I think the pastry chef bias is showing a little," Yuzu joked. Hibana scoffed again, but this time it seemed as though she was in agreement when Yuzu, and Teru took a big bite of his sando as he hummed flatly. "Still, even I have my cheat days. Sometimes sugar is too tempting to pass up."
As though emphasising, he held up the small can of soda he'd gotten with his lunch. Yoyo was already halfway through one platter of gyoza as she looked at him—it'd only been two minutes, how did she fit them all in her mouth so quickly?—and she held up her own drink as though proudly showing off what she'd ordered as well. Despite her drink being the healthier option, Yoyo still had two whole jugs of the stuff; green tea was great to pair with ramen, for sure, but two whole jugs? Those things were a gallon each.
To Yuzu's horror, despite how resigned he was to it, he had to remind himself that Yoyo wasn't the only one to have the same amount of drink accompanying her gargantuan meal.
"Tea would be a healthier, less-addictive option," Hibana continued to nag. She motioned to one of the mugs that had been given to Yoyo, which Gourmand had mistakenly assumed was for multiple people to drink the tea. Yoyo looked at the mugs, and then seemed to understand what Hibana was getting at as she wiped one down with a napkin and poured some green tea into it. She slid it across to Hibana, and Hibana took it with a sigh. "Thank you, dear. Tea is just as varied as coffee can be, as well. Ono, you agree, don't you?"
Tora, without missing a beat, chirped, "I agree with Teru-chi about sugar and coffee tasting nice."
"Of course you do," Hibana muttered darkly into her tea.
"Are none of us going to ask how Yoyo-san's going to fit all of that in?" Yuzu asked quietly. Yoyo was already digging into her first bowl of ramen, her first platter of gyoza finished and the second halfway done. That was… that was half of the gyoza, almost thirty-six of them down in five minutes. Where the hell was she putting it all?
Tora shrugged lazily, smiling to himself as he set down his burrito and took a sip of his own water. "You should've seen the breakfasts this morning, if you think Yoyo-san's lunch is something to gawk at. I think I heard someone describing a breakfast burger from the States to Gourmand in line this morning. Something about a Quadruple Coronary Bypass?"
Immediately, Yoyo raised her hands with glee and slurped up what noodles she had dangling from her mouth. Tora's face went pale, almost in horror, and Yoyo beamed at him proudly.
"It was so delicious!" she chirped. "Eight slices of Texas toast, thirty-two ounces of ground sirloin, twenty-eight slices of American cheese—they didn't have it, so the regular cheddar was fine too I guess—four fried eggs, twenty-seven strips of bacon, twelve ounces of mayo, twenty ounces of potato, and some extra bacon bits and gooey cheese to top it all off! Oh, and I got six glasses of orange juice to have with it! Really tall glasses! That's actually why Gourmand gave me two jugs this time for my tea, so he could save glasses for people who just wanted one serving."
Yuzu had lost count of how much food that was after the thirty-two ounces of ground sirloin. All of that for breakfast, and she could still fit in that big of a lunch? Her Quirk didn't burn calories like others in the class did, so he had to wonder if this was just another effect of having a deep space storage entrance in her body or something. According to Yoyo, there was no upper limit to what she could store in the star on her chest, so maybe her stomach just… was like that too.
In the silence that settled over the group, no one seemed to have anything to say in regards to Yoyo's appetite and her large lunch. She finished up her first ramen bowl, chugging down the broth with large gulps, and she moved on to the next bowl before someone could think of anything.
Finally, though, Teru paused eating his sando and deadpanned, "Yoyo-san, thank you for the incredible self-restraint you showed at the banquet yesterday."
Yoyo looked at him with a clueless expression, beaming as she chewed on her food with a hum, but she seemed happy to be thanked and nodded back to him excitedly.
Someone else wandered near their table, and they let out a surprised sound at the sight of Yoyo's food. Everyone looked over, Yuzu included, and he was surprised to see that Lyoko had gotten his food so late. He'd been standing in line when Yuzu was ordering, and he'd been ahead of him for a spell. But then a girl with blue hair had made him let her go first, and Yuzu had assumed that Lyoko simply ordered after her. Weird, he thought. He might have to ask about that.
Lyoko was carrying a meal that seemed very out of character for him, or at least Yuzu thought so. Someone as high-energy and interested in spicy food as Lyoko didn't seem the type to order a fruit salad bowl and yoghurt. Yuzu stared at the tray of food with a frown, and when he looked at Lyoko, the boy was quick to push the focus on Yoyo again.
"Wow, you ate this much already?" Lyoko marvelled. He leaned closer, eyes wide, and Yoyo nodded hurriedly as she stuffed some pork belly into her mouth. "We might have to call you the calorie queen in our class!"
Under her breath, Yuzu heard Hibana mutter something about it being the only kind of queen Yoyo could be. Teru seemed to hear it too, sending her a sharp glare, and Hibana rolled her eyes as she looked away in displeasure. Did she just not like Yoyo? Or did she not approve of all the food on the table? Yuzu wouldn't deny noticing that Hibana seemed to have an aversion to eating, only picking up one of the fruit sandos when Teru had offered her one. Was it a model thing? Also weird, he thought. He might have to ask about that too.
"I'm surprised you got a fruit bowl," Tora piped up, and Yuzu was grateful the most extraverted at their table—with the exception of Yoyo—had echoed what he'd thought. Lyoko looked at Tora nervously, and he laughed with a bit of shame in his tone.
"W—Well, sometimes you gotta be healthy for a day," he reasoned. Tora hummed with a frown, leaning forward to prop his chin on his palm.
"But you were so excited when Mori-chan talked about that tteokbokki stuff," Tora pointed out. "And I heard you talking with Suzuki-chan this morning about getting something with gochujang in it for lunch after she told you what it tasted like."
Lyoko seemed a little ashamed as he looked down at his tray. He stared at the fruit bowl with a frown. When he looked back up again, over at Tora, he forced himself to smile as he laughed a little.
"Maybe I'll get it for dinner instead," Lyoko decided. "I think I was just expecting combat training already today, and wanted to get some good vitamins in me before then."
He hurried away from the table as soon as he said it, wishing everyone luck for their next class—English, something Yoyo was excited about after back to back classes that made her head spin, according to her. It didn't take Lyoko long to be singled out by Aoi, who stood up on her chair and called out to him loudly enough that, from another table nearby, the same blue-haired girl Yuzu had seen in line with him quietly turned away and paused in her own attempt to call Lyoko over.
Lyoko sat with Aoi and Tetsuya and Shiki with a sheepish smile, and immediately Aoi began piling some of her lunch on his tray on a small plate while shaking her head. Yuzu couldn't quite read her lips, but it was obvious from her reaction that she disapproved of such a small meal. The massive sukiyaki bowl in front of her was enough to feed a whole family, and she was clearly happy to share some of the meat and veggies already cooked inside of it.
Nature was healing, Yuzu thought with approval. Lyoko, like the other big contenders in the class, gave him the impression of needing to eat like a hummingbird with how active his Quirk made him. A small bowl of fruit salad was good for you, sure, but not enough for the preparations Lyoko said he was making in case of a combat class. If the healing factor of his Quirk functioned similarly to Shiki's regeneration Quirk, the boy needed stamina—and where better to get stamina than sugar and calories?
"That was a little weird," Teru mumbled before biting into his sando again.
Tora nodded in agreement. "Arashi-kun was very interested in spicy food yesterday," he reiterated. "And I didn't see a single pepper of any kind in that salad bowl. Not even a jalapeño!"
"I know that kind of face, too," Hibana sighed. She was still sulking over Teru glaring at her, but it seemed she felt it important enough to weigh in on the conversation over sulking. "Mabushi used to make that face when our parents would spring a diet on her. Look how happy he is downing all that meat. He didn't want a damn salad."
If he didn't want the salad, then did that mean he was forced to get it? Yuzu furrowed his brows as he looked back over in the two tables' direction. The blue-haired girl was unmistakably the one who'd been with him in line, and it did seem like he would've sat with her if she'd called out to him. Wasn't she in 1-A? Was she a friend? Or not?
Yuzu wasn't the type to meddle, but something didn't sit right with him.
"Do you think he's being bullied?" he asked without meaning to.
Yoyo was alarmed, choking on her food—already done with her second bowl of ramen, Yuzu noted, and he thought idly that she'd make numbers online as a food warrior—before she glugged down some green tea and croaked, "On the first day of school!?"
"Bullies work fast," Teru told her. He passed her a napkin, and she wiped the broth that was dribbling off of her chin with a grateful murmur. "If he knew the bully in middle school, it might've continued into high school."
"But he's in the heroics department!" Yoyo insisted. "Aren't we considered untouchable? Don't people usually wanna be near us and be our friends?"
Tora shrugged. "Depends, really. A lot of people weren't fond of Ground Zero when he started out. My mama said he had a real chip on his shoulder, and the friends he did had constantly poked the bear. But that was in his first year. I hear he got more bearable after the big war with All for One."
"More than that," Hibana chimed in, "some bullies are just that stupid. I mean, really, Zenshi is a school that prides itself on bringing down the hammer with bullying. And one of our senpais wasn't immune to it, either. It's so obvious that Olivia-senpai was looked down on in the past by her peers."
Everyone looked at Hibana in surprise. She bristled, crossing her arms over her chest, and looked away from everyone.
"What?" she scoffed. "You'd be blind not to notice! If I were a bully, I'd go for the most powerless one in the class. And if I were a bully in the general studies department, I'd feel spited that a Quirkless student got into the heroics department instead of me."
"Should we report this, then?" Yuzu asked.
Yoyo picked at her gyoza with a hum. "But… Do we know who the bully is?" she asked, anxious.
Yuzu frowned. He had an idea of who it might be, but… Unless he had solid proof, there was no way they could just come out and say someone from A class was picking on one of their classmates. And it felt like Lyoko wouldn't just outright say who it was, either, if he was going out of his way to make excuses. Did he feel ashamed that he was being picked on? Or did he genuinely think that person was his friend? It was always a delicate situation, handling someone else's issues, and Yuzu was well aware that one misstep could implode not only someone else's relationships, but his own relationships with people as well.
So he glanced at Teru, pausing to sip his soda, and he asked, "Hey, Teru-kun, you know a girl in A class, right?"
Teru seemed to catch on to what he was saying fairly quickly. He frowned, displeased to hear that Yuzu suspected it was someone else in the heroics department, but nodded once.
"I'll ask her to keep an eye on her classmates for anything," he muttered. "If it's me asking for a favour, she won't jump headfirst into it like usual."
Tora hummed across the table at them. "Keima-chan sure is reliable," he mused.
"Reliable is definitely a word for it," Hibana muttered. "But I have to agree. If Teru-kun is the one asking a favour, she'll actually be careful about it. Such a shame that we have such riff-raff in our department right out the gate, if you ask me."
A shame, indeed.
With her gyoza finished and one final bowl of ramen left, and one of her jugs empty (when did that happen? When did that happen?), Yoyo let out a cheer and clapped her hands together in quiet applause.
"Look at you four! So responsible and hero-like!" she praised them. Despite her somewhat negative opinion of Yoyo, likely due to how clueless Yoyo seemed to be on top of her constant whining in class this morning, Hibana preened at the praise gleefully and flicked her hair over her shoulder. "You're so smart, too, coming up with all this so fast!"
Were they really that smart for noticing something was off about their classmate? Yuzu doubted it, especially when noticing these things came with the territory of Pro Heroes, but he supposed he'd take the praise where he could get it. He definitely felt there could be some improvement on his part—especially with his judgement, since he was struggling to make heads or tails of whether or not it was the girl with blue hair doing the bullying. If he were just a little more savvy, he might've been able to make a snap decision and hail a teacher on the way back to class about it.
But still. Yoyo was right about everyone brainstorming very quickly about what to do and how to handle it. Despite the rocky start Tora and Hibana had gotten off to yesterday, when they agreed on things they tended to share the same train of thought.
Yuzu wouldn't outright call them friends at this point, but they were on their way to some kind of cohesive cooperation together.
Their attention went back to Yoyo again, though, when she demolished half of her final ramen bowl and chugged more of her green tea. All that liquid and no bathroom break in sight, Yuzu thought, and he was mildly impressed by it all. Tora had barely started eating the pear he was saving for dessert, and he blinked a couple of times before opening his mouth.
"Hey, Yoyo-chan," he started. Yoyo looked up from her bowl, and her cheeks were as wide as a chipmunk's searching for somewhere to stash its nuts. "If you had a big breakfast and lunch, what's on the menu for dinner tonight?"
The star pupils in Yoyo's eyes became even starrier, if that were possible. She gobbled down the rest of her ramen in a hurry, and everyone just stared at her in stunned silence as the empty bowl was set down on the table with a delighted sigh from Yoyo. She poured herself a proper mug of green tea this time, instead of chugging it from the jug, and she beamed at Tora. She was clearly excited to be asked about her menu choice, especially after the detail she'd gone into for what she had for breakfast.
"There's a restaurant that does a big, big takoyaki rice and broth bowl called the Dekamori Takoyaki Chazuke!" she announced. She reached into the star on her chest, and her phone came out with her hand. She wasted no time searching it up, and then Yoyo was sliding the phone in the middle of the table to show off the picture. True enough, that was a massive bowl of broth and takoyaki, with the takoyaki in question twice the size of a standard takoyaki. Yuzu stared at it blankly, unable to find the rice, but as Yoyo went on, he began to figure out where exactly that rice was. "Gourmand said he could do it with a bit of prep time for me! It's four servings of steamed rice at the bottom of a giant bowl, and then fifty whole double-sized takoyaki sitting on top! The broth is meant to be a mix of salty and spicy, and it's supposed to emphasise the takoyaki flavour while the rice absorbs the broth like a porridge! And then I'll have a jug of diet soda on the side with it!"
Hibana gave her a dry glare. "Do you honestly think a diet soda is going to be healthy enough to counter all that salt?" she deadpanned.
Yoyo tilted her head innocently. "Diet soda's healthy?" she asked.
Ah, Yuzu thought the moment the words left Yoyo's lips. She wasn't doing it for the health benefit. She just genuinely liked the taste of diet soda.
Tora, quietly, muttered to himself, "I kinda wanna try that."
Well there was a surprise. "I thought you said you were vegetarian?" Yuzu asked him.
Tora nodded. "I am. But I eat seafood sometimes. That's vegetarian, right? When you just don't eat poultry and red meat?"
"That's pescatarian, idiot," Hibana hissed. "You're a pescatarian."
"Ono-kun doesn't sound pesky to me," Yoyo said, confused.
"You're thinking of a pest," Teru chimed in, and it was obvious he was joking around at this point. "Ono-san's a purse."
Alright, two could play this game. "You're thinking of a pouch," Yuzu said, sounding wholly serious. "He's actually a pooch."
Hibana seemed to be getting it now. She smirked at Yuzu, arms crossed over her chest, and she started to drawl, "Don't be ridiculous. With his appearance, he's less of a pooch and more of a p—"
"You guys are so funny," Tora said dryly. "Maybe I oughta report you guys for bullying instead of looking into Arashi-kun's bully."
Yoyo gasped, horrified. She began to scold everyone at the table, schooling them on why teasing their friend was wrong, and despite Tora's dry response earlier, all four of them started chuckling to themselves. Yuzu finished off the rest of his meal with a smile on his face, and so did the others.
Not bad for a first lunch of the school year, he thought as the group took their plates up to the window for the staff to clean. And certainly not bad for their first round of classes. The group walked together back to the classroom, Yoyo rubbing her belly with a satisfied burp, and it wasn't until they made it to the doorway that she stopped the group with a determined grin.
"Oh! If you guys need help with English, lemme know! I can't explain it all that good, but English is my second—or first language? I speak it all the time at home, and I can ask my papa why certain sentences sound correct while others don't!" she informed them. Teru let out an interested sound, down for Yoyo's help with the subject, while Hibana stuck her nose up in the air in a clear indication that her grades in English weren't suffering enough to need a native speaker's help.
Tora seemed interested, though, and Yuzu thanked Yoyo for the offer. From the looks of things, none of them really struggled with the topic. But Yoyo was offering, and Yuzu knew better than to look a gift horse in the mouth.
It was really no surprise when, for their English class, the teacher turned out to be Rocketti—a UA alumnus who'd studied on a transfer program from the United States. And it was even less of a surprise to hear Rocketti preemptively inform everyone that teaching someone a rude phrase in a language they didn't understand was, in fact, not very heroic of them. Clearly there was a story behind such a warning, but she didn't seem interested in going into detail.
Not bad for a first day, Yuzu repeated to himself as Rocketti taught everyone how to greet each other in English. Not bad at all.